Smartphone love has TV feeling threatened

Peter Trute, AAP Senior Finance Writer

Television still tops the list for how Australians entertain themselves, but it may be on borrowed time as attention to the small screen is increasingly shared with smartphones and other digital devices.

A new survey shows new technologies are making consumers a tougher target for media companies and advertisers as smartphones, tablets and laptops are used more for entertainment, splintering the market across different devices and demographics.

The Deloitte State of the Media Survey also found 78 per cent of people aged 14 to 29 see their smartphones as an entertainment device, a far greater percentage than among Gen-Xers and older generations.

Nearly two-thirds - 63 per cent - of respondents to the survey ranked live TV in their top three leisure pursuits, while 44 per cent included social and personal internet use.

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However Deloitte media partner Clare Harding said the survey found a high level of entertainment multi-tasking among Australians - with browsing online, using social media, emailing and texting among common activities while watching TV.

"We are digital omnivores," Ms Harding said at the launch of the report on Thursday.

"More than a quarter of Australians own a laptop, a tablet and a smartphone and we multitask with them."

Younger generations are less likely to watch TV, with fewer than half of 14-to-23-year-olds ranking it in their top three.

The challenge for media companies and advertisers is to develop "platform neutral strategies" to deliver programs and advertising that will cut through in a digitally converged world, Ms Harding said.

A big part of that will be data collection to understand consumer behaviour - potentially a problem as the report also found 79 per cent of respondents were uncomfortable with having their online activity tracked.

The survey found 29 per cent of Australians still do nothing else when watching TV - among the highest proportion worldwide, with Ms Harding describing the figure as good news for broadcasters and advertisers, at least in the short term.

Among other findings, the report showed tablet penetration has grown from just 13 per cent in Australia in 2011 to 37 per cent in 2012 - ranking the country third after Spain and Italy for highest ownership.

The love affair with the smartphone remains strong, however, with ownership at 68 per cent nationally and 80 per cent of people surveyed rating their phone as more valuable than their tablet.

The report also found social media uptake has reached a point where 48 per cent of people are updating their status almost daily.

Nicola Alcorn, one of the report authors, said social media will continue to evolve into "social commerce" but so far, social media advertising was raising awareness of products but failing to convert to sales.

"The role of social media is still playing out in advertising," Ms Alcorn said.

The Deloitte report is based on an online survey of 2,000 Australians aged 14 to 75.